


Notes Toward A Monograph Upon the Intellect and the Passions, Part Two

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [24]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, Stakeout, Story: The Adventure of the Empty House, Waxworks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-05 07:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17320367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: Let me begin afresh by attempting to fully analyze the complicated feelings that possessed me as I stood in the foyer of Watson's home, waiting for the Committee spy (otherwise Miss Elizabeth Littell, a pickpocket of some reknown now employed to steal secrets for the state) to announce my presence to him. I note initially that resurrecting oneself after even a short period of being dead is an exhausting and bewildering business. I do not recommend it.***Holmes finally emerges, and he and Watson go out to an empty house to take on Colonel Moran. Holmes has a plan. In fact, he has two plans. Neither of them goes exactly as expected.





	Notes Toward A Monograph Upon the Intellect and the Passions, Part Two

**NOTES TOWARD A MONOGRAPH UPON THE INTELLECT AND THE PASSIONS**

**Memorandum: The murder of the Right Honorable Ronald Adair, cont'd.**

Let me begin afresh by attempting to fully analyze the complicated feelings that possessed me as I stood in the foyer of Watson's home, waiting for the Committee spy (otherwise Miss Elizabeth Littell, a pickpocket of some reknown now employed to steal secrets for the state) to announce my presence to him. I note initially that resurrecting oneself after even a short period of being dead is an exhausting and bewildering business. I do not recommend it. My hypothesis is that after one's 'death,' one's friends and acquaintances remove from their minds and their tongues the restraints that ordinarily govern their thoughts and conversation about one. Once they have done this final summing-up, any new data that arrives to alter those conclusions upsets them greatly. For my poor Watson, the discovery of my continued existence meant six weeks of brain fever. Even my brother, on the evidence of his letter, was affected by his discovery of my survival. Perhaps surprisingly, Lestrade seems to have taken everything in stride. Equally surprisingly, Mrs. Hudson was initially very distressed. I could not have predicted how my inconsiderate return from the undiscovered bourne would disarrange her notions of the afterlife. At least my appearance at Watson's study tonight would not surprise him. Six o'clock, possibly in disguise. That much I had managed to communicate.

I had indeed chosen for this faux-reunion what proved unfortunately to be a particularly uncomfortable disguise. I have my own receipt for an adhesive which allows for the swift attachment and removal of false whiskers. It is superior in every way to spirit gum, save that it is far more irritating to the skin. The old man's stoop, and the old man's bent knees and shambling gait, are highly convincing to spectators but very hard on the joints of the performer. I also wished, as I waited, that I had chosen a trade other than bookseller, whose wares might have been less heavy and less awkward to carry. These small irritations kept me from dwelling on the ordeal ahead.

The spy returned, looked me up and down with ill-concealed disgust, and intimated icily that Dr. Watson had condescended to see me in his study. I thanked her, acidly, and followed.

Watson was at his desk, writing in one of his many leatherbound memorandum books. I noted that he had placed my cigarette case on the mantel, on top of a scrap of black crape. A black-bordered testimonial to my memory, signed by the members of the Society for the Protection of Single Ladies and handsomely framed, hung over the mantelpiece. In the seconds before he turned to look at me, I felt I had been instantly transported back in time, to the first days after Watson's return to London, when he still believed that I had destroyed myself at Reichenbach. I saw him surrounding himself with these morbid mementos of my death and then silently and sturdily soldiering on in his empty house. I saw him settling in, grimly, to survive his abandonment by his past and future loves--composing himself for a quiet if despondent life of slow petrification. And then, one evening, in his mind, some quite ordinary turn of thought, perhaps some insignificant chemical reaction in his brain, completed a broken connection, and he was electrified with the agony of hope.

He turned to look at me.

I was taken aback by the lack of recognition in his eyes. Surely he knew. I had warned him. Of course he would have to dissemble for the benefit of the spy; but I was fairly certain that Watson could not _feign_ astonishment with this level of naturalism. 

"You're surprised to see me, sir," I said, in an old man's croak.

"I certainly am," he replied. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr....?"

"Sigerson," I replied, reaching for the alias I had been using before my abduction. "You most likely don't remember, sir, but..."

With a portion of my faculties, I invented a plausible story of a forgettable chance encounter, while with the rest of them I cursed Watson's truly exceptional credulity regarding disguises. I can only attribute it to his love of the theater. In order to increase his pleasure in the theatrical illusion, I believe, he has trained himself not only to suspend disbelief but to slough it off like a snakeskin at the first whiff of greasepaint. In the early years of our acquaintance I found this endlessly amusing. But--at least for the first draft, I must speak candidly--it is not amusing to come face to face with a man you fellated in a dark coach less than twenty-four hours previously and see him try to remember why something about you seems familiar.

Accordingly, at what I judged was the earliest possible moment, I drew his attention to the bookshelf behind his desk. He turned to look at it. I stripped whiskers, hair, and hat off--so fast that my upper lip and cheeks were still stinging when he turned round and finally  _saw_ me.

At least the surprise was genuine. 

He leapt to his feet. I saw that rueful look in his eyes--that utterly endearing "oh, what an ass I have been" look--and smiled. He began to smile back.

Then he turned pale and collapsed.

In my monograph on malingering, I have noted that unless the malingerer is both a truly committed artist and a keen obersever of nature, a sham faint is easily distinguished from a true faint. It is very difficult for anyone conscious to fully overcome the body's instinct for self-protection. Watson's was the genuine article. He went down like a sandbag, striking his head on the edge of his desk and laying himself flat on the floor of his study.

I ran to his side. I heard the footsteps of the pickpocket-turned-servant approaching. 

"Oh my stars!" she shouted, from the doorway. I looked up. She was genuinely astonished.

"Here--" she stammered. "You--you ain't--you're not--who are you?"

I was itching to ask her the same question; but I refrained.

"I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes," I said, calmly but firmly. "I quite understand that you are astonished to see me alive and well. Evidently, so was your master. Please fetch a basin of cold water and a handkerchief."

The spy disappeared from the doorway; but of course she would stay and listen. I checked Watson's pulse, verified his breathing, and hauled him back into his armchair. He was still quite pale. I undid his collar-ends and, when that produced no effect, found the cabinet in which he kept his spirits and poured out what I now recognize was an unnecessarily large tot of brandy. I fear that due to my inexperience in dosing unconscious patients, I half-choked him with it. He came alive coughing and spluttering, blinking up at me. 

"My dear Watson," I said, as dispassionately as I could. "I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected."

By the time I had finished speaking, Watson had perceived the spy over my shoulder, handing me the basin of water. He joined the scene in progress, like a professional.

"Holmes!" he shouted, gripping me by the arms. "Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?"

The spy, after getting her eyeful, curtsied and withdrew. She was out of sight, but (as we both knew) almost certainly not out of earshot. We went on playing the comedy.

"Wait a moment," I said, applying the damp kerchief to the spot above his right eyebrow where his head had struck the desk. "Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss things? I have given you a serious shock by my unnecessarily dramatic reappearance."

I had, in fact, no idea why Watson had actually fainted. This gave my expression of alarm, I hoped, the desired authenticity. Watson himself seemed completely unconcerned. He fired off a few melodramatic and exaggerated protestations of astonishment, and began moving his hands over my outstretched arms, feeling the muscle and sinew through the old bookseller's threadbare shirtsleeves. Just was I was coming round to the idea that he was not so much overacting as indulging himself, he said, "Well, you're not a spirit, anyhow."

It was good sound theatrical instinct. Watson, striving for verisimilitude, reached for words I had actually said to him upon recovering my senses on the deck of that pestilential smuggler's ship. In passing them back to me, however, Watson revived that moment for both of us so vividly that we were, for a terrifying instant, both paralyzed. Each of us was fighting, with the same degree of success, and overpowering urge to take the other in his arms. Yielding to it would have put an end to our charade, with embarrassing alacrity.

Credit where it is due: Watson mastered himself first. "My dear chap," he said, louder than was quite necessary. "I am overjoyed to see you. Sit down and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful chasm."

Sit down, he indicated silently but plainly,  _far away from me._

I obliged by taking up residence on his settee. Watson subsided gratefully into his armchair. 

“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,” I said. “It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end. Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations we have, if I may ask for your co-operation, a hard and dangerous night’s work in front of us."

Watson did not bother suppressing an insinuating glance.

"Perhaps it would be better if I gave you an account of the whole situation when that work is finished,” I said.

I did not expect him to let me off so easily. My inference was correct.

"I am full of curiosity," he said, settling himself in the armchair with an infuriatingly unconvincing look of innocent wonder. "I should much prefer to hear now."

He was full, not of curiosity, but of gleeful and somewhat malicious anticipation. All this time, Watson had been the one turning what should have been a series of academic lectures into thrilling tales of suspense, danger, and intrigue. He was eager to see me attempt it. When he had to invent a lie for Bellinger about where I had been all this time, Mycroft took the easy way out. But Bellinger had been sworn to secrecy. _This_ story was for posterity. It was to be a safe and innoccuous version palatable to the remainder of the Committee, and (eventually) to Watson's public. I would not have posterity imagining me hiding, during those terrible months, like a badger in his den. And yet the truth was the absolute last thing I could tell him.

"You'll come with me tonight?" I said, stalling for time.

"I certainly hope so," Watson murmured.

" _Watson!_ " I whispered, fiercely. 

"When you like and where you like," he replied, loudly and with careful enunciation.

“This is indeed like the old days. Well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.”

Watson's moustache twitched a little as he readied himself for my tale. If he could not satisfy himself, for the moment, in any other way, he was determined to savor every delicious moment of my ordeal. 

"You were never in it?" he prompted, blandly.

"No, Watson," I said. "I was never in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine." 

He started a little. I rushed on.

"I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway which led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his grey eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his courteous permission to write the short note which you afterwards received."

I realized I had become so rattled that I was treating my verbs like a German. That infernal note, which had nearly killed me and produced what might well have become a fatal misunderstanding in Watson, was undoubtedly folded up in his breast pocket at this moment. He had carried the thing next his heart, bloodstains and all, during his whole weary journey to find me; when we parted company after Cornwall, he began carrying it again. It is the one document in the world I would most like to burn; but he will not be parted from it.

I leaned back, lit a cigarette, and began inventing--for the Committee's edification and for Watson's pleasure--a series of outrageous lies.

I had read and enjoyed Mr. Oscar Wilde's monograph on the subject of lying in the  _Nineteenth Century;_ but it proved to be of little practical assistance. In a fever that almost amounted to panic, I emptied out the lumber-room of my memory and piled on details from the most incongruous places. I talked wildly of coal-tar derivatives, llamas with two "l"s, Lamas with one "l", cueniform tablets, Mesopotamia, Mecca, Khartoum--I threw that in just for the Committee; they have never recovered from the shame of it--what have you. If I recall correctly, oysters and oyster-beds came into it somewhere. I believe I may have invented a new Japanese martial art. I think even Watson will have difficulty remembering half the rubbish I talked. I cursed myself for my impatience. We could not depart for the second stage of our adventure--which I could NOT discuss before this spy--until after full darkness; and that would not be for another two and a half hours. At length, Watson took pity on me and, calling the servant/spy back into the room, introduced me to her with feigned elation and astonishment and sent her off to buy a woodcock to celebrate my return.

She informed him with insincere regret that at this hour the shops would be closed, and at any rate it was too late in the evening to begin roasting a fowl. The Welsh rarebit she had scheduled for Dr. Watson's dinner would easily stretch to accommodate his guest, along with a clear soup and roasted parsnips. Misinterpreting his expression of intense disappointment, and presumably concerned about being sacked before completing her mission, she hastened to offer a celebratory trifle for dessert.

By the time we had dined, I was beginning to feel as if I had become trapped in a second-rate Restoration comedy about a Puritan killjoy named Olivia Blockwell who was determined to thwart the consummation of a marriage between Mr. Hartsick Horner and Doctor Jack Loveright. In Watson's study, I told more lies, aided at least by Watson's very best port and a box of his favorite cigars. Preoccupied as I was with my own sensations, I nevertheless felt as if there were something subtly but significantly off-kilter about this ritual, or about the room itself. It is always more difficult to perceive an absence than a presence. Finally I realized that Watson had not taken out his pocketwatch before opening the bottle of port, as he always had when I visited him during the years of his marriage. 

I did a bit of mental arithmetic. Watson had eaten quite heartily at dinner, despite the plain fare, and consumed a prodigious helping of trifle. His unusually keen appetite could be explained by any number of factors, but it occurred to me at that moment that perhaps it had been Watson's first meal of the day. The anticipation of this meeting had robbed me of my own appetite at breakfast, and I had never bothered with luncheon. Prolonged inanition would indeed be a plausible, even probable explanation for his fainting in the study--combined with his sudden change of position and a likely rushing of the blood to his nether regions.

This made it a trifle concerning to add up the liquid side of the ledger. There was the revivifying glass of brandy, the wine at dinner, the beer in the rarebit, the sherry in the trifle, and now a second glass of port. For an ordinary man of his size, on a full stomach, this would hardly be alarming. But Watson, when the watch is there to cast its baleful glance upon him, is now quite abstemious (the early days were quite different); moreover, Watson never goes without a meal if he can help it. As for myself, I have always reserved this particular vice for the period  _after_ the case is over. This was on the verge of becoming a serious problem. We both carry revolvers, but of course we both know that at the moments of crisis it is Watson who does the shooting. And whatever Americans may try to tell you, no man's aim is improved by drink.

Having read this over, I suspect myself of interpreting the facts tendentiously, based on my knowledge of later events. I will make a note to address that on revision.

At last darkness fell, and we could depart. I let him know. Watson leapt to his feet, pocketed his memorandum book, locked away the port and cigars, and turned to me with an enthusiasm that I believe may temporarily have altered my heart rate. When Watson has a  _large_ quantity of drink taken, he becomes morose. A small quantity makes him convivial. The circumstances of the evening make it difficult to determine the exact quantity consumed on this occasion, but whatever quantity it was, it evidently renders Watson flirtatious.

Having exited the house with all possible speed, I spent much of the cab ride trying to impress on an inconveniently amorous Watson the vital importance of keeping our wits about us and our attention focused on the task at hand. I was obliged to become stern. I reminded Watson that Colonel Moran was, in addition to a card sharp, thief, fence, spy, traitor, and murderer, a big game hunter whose bag of tigers was still unrivalled. At length, my instruction seemed to be having some effect upon him. Watson, after all, is intimate with danger and respects it. By the time we had arrived at the rear entrance of Camden House, he had become almost solemn. 

I unlocked the door, ushered Watson in to the close, narrow back hall, and turned round to lock the door behind us. As it closed, blocking out what little light there was in that yard, the hall was plunged into nearly total darkness. 

"Watson!" I whispered. "Where are you?"

I was vexed with myself then, as I am now. I  _knew_ where Watson was; I  _knew_ that he could not be more than three feet away from me; the door at the end of the hall had not opened and there was no other exit. Yet my body behaved as if I had been suddenly shut up alone inside an airless wooden box. I recognized the feeling. I understood its provenance. That did not enable me to escape from it. 

"I'm right here, Holmes."

I felt his hand encircle my wrist. Watson does not have what the Strand romances call  _the hands of a surgeon._ They are large, square, and--when seen at rest--unaesthetic. But there is a wonderful warmth and tenderness in their touch, and a thrilling strength in their grip. With one hand against the wall to guide me, and the other still safely locked inside the circlet of Watson's fingers, I led us down the hall and into the front room. 

A little light from the gaslamps of Baker Street struggled through the dust-coated windows to spill like watered-down milk along the bare floorboards. Near the right-hand wall, grouped around a dusty mantelpiece, were a dilapidated sofa and two musty armchairs, each covered with a dirty white sheet. The rest of the room was bare. I could now just dimly make out the features of Watson's face. He was looking at me, full of concern. I shook his grip off my wrist, a bit self-consciously. 

"Well," I whispered. "Moran is our game; this is our blind. We must inspect it first, to ensure that he has not anticipated us, and then--"

Watson, who had shifted his attention to the front windows, let out a sharp cry, and once again seized my wrist, this time for his own consolation and reassurance. He had noticed a tall, dark, slender figure standing just to the right of the front window. It was dressed in my best burglar's black. From the right pocket of the black trousers, the butt of a revolver protruded. Its back was to us. One of its hands was against the wall, at about shoulder height; the other rested on the windowsill. Its narrow, angular face was turned toward the dusty window-panes; its chin tilted as if it were looking up at the second storey of the house just opposite. A little gaslight picked out the waves in a somewhat untidy shock of hair.

Watson was utterly taken aback. All the old excitement flooded me. My fear melted entirely away as I looked at his widened eyes, heard the catch in his breath. What a wonderful thing to look forward to, even after all we had been through--a whole lifetime of astonishing Watson.

"But--"

He turned back to look at me.

"I trust," I said, very quietly, "that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety."

It sounded rehearsed; and it was. For days on end in Mycroft's lair I had entertained myself by imagining this moment. Watson smiled, gave out a little laugh of wonderment, and said, "If that isn't you, then what on earth is it?"

"My dear Watson--" I began, but he got there on his own.

"It's a waxwork," he murmured, closing his eyes in shame. "Of course. Monsieur Meunier. But...why?"

I was impatient now to show him the rest of the scheme. No; not impatient; giddy. I must in the name of scientific accuracy use the term  _giddy_ to describe my emotional state as I led him to the front windows and directed him to crouch down and follow the waxwork's gaze.

There was another of those delectable gasps of astonishment. Mrs. Hudson had done it very well. All the lights in our sitting room were on. The blinds were drawn. A wax bust of myself was silhouetted sharply against it. From outside, it looked as if I were seated in my dressing-gown by the window, absorbed perhaps in a book.

"Incredible," Watson breathed, putting a hand on my knee.

"What do you think?" I asked, not removing his hand. "Is it like?"

"Very like," he said. "But--if you'll pardon my saying so, Holmes--it is quite evidently not a living creature. It looks like you--but a statue of you." He turned toward me anxiously. "Do you think it will really deceive Colonel Moran? If the man is a hunter, presumably he knows what a decoy is."

This is a monograph and not a love letter; but in the interest of gathering all the data I must report that it went to my heart to see his concern for both my safety and my self-love. It further twisted my heart-strings to see how quickly he had not only deduced the function of this display but detected what appeared to be the flaw in the plan. Watson is always learning, ever seeking to improve. He seems to accept that he will never be able to apply my methods as effectively as I do; but he enjoys trying and I enjoy--I love--watching him try.

"No," I murmured, into his ear. "It will not deceive him. He will see it, and he will immediately infer that we have set the bust up there as bait for our trap. He will therefore not fire upon it, as to do that would give away his position, and he will surely suspect that there are police stationed all over the area waiting to pounce, as indeed there are."

"So what is the object in staging the deception?"

"Look to your right," I said.

Watson glanced back at the waxwork. From our position I could see its face. It was startling. The replication of my features was exact. But the eyes gleamed like glass--which they were. The brows were sewn in. The lips were unnaturally rigid, the surface of the skin unnaturally even and smooth. It was unsettling how life- _like,_ and yet how obviously life- _less,_ the thing actually was.

"Moran sees the bait," I murmured. "He knows it is a trap. He is looking for the hunter who _set_ the trap. In the whole block facing 221b, this is the only unoccupied house. It is completely dark; but if he looks over at the ground floor windows  _very_ carefully, he may just catch a glimpse, through the dust, of a man's head looking out. He will then enter from the back door, stalk through the hall, spy his prey, and attack. My hope is that he might steal up to the waxwork and attempt to disarm it. Then we should have no difficulty springing out, falling upon him, and cutting off his escape. If he simply fires as soon as he sees it, our advantage will be smaller and there may be a chase."

"But Lestrade, or someone, is waiting at the back, of course," said Watson.

I did not respond immediately. 

"Surely someone is covering the exit," Watson repeated.

"Watson," I replied, with some acerbity. "Moran can spot a plainclothes policeman at one hundred yards. Any criminal of ordinary wit and experience can. To post policeman near this house would be to give the game away entirely. It would tell Moran that we are expecting him, and he would take care not to arrive. We will handle him between us, as we did Moriarty. Only this time," I added, "you will not expose yourself to the vengeance of the law by executing him."

"I've told you, Holmes, it was self-defense."

"So you say, Watson, but the prosecuting counsel would be bound to point out that  _I_ am not actually  _your self._ " 

Watson looked at me as if this had never occurred to him.

"What jury would convict me for not allowing him to murder you?"

"Oh Watson," I said. "We need not debate it; only you must realize how important it is, under these circumstances and with Lestrade on the case, to take Moran alive."

"Yes," Watson said, slowly. "Because of course you haven't told Lestrade anything about this part of the plan, have you?"

He did not really need me to answer that, and I did not.

"And so if one of us  _does_ shoot him," Watson mused, "it will look rather like conspiracy to commit murder."

"It would," I said, reluctantly.

"With premeditation."

"Yes, all right, Watson," I said. "I will search the upper floors; do you take up a position in that corner, and keep a lookout for Moran."

Watson withdrew into the darkest corner of the room--the one closest to the door to the hallway. Once he had withdrawn into it, it really was difficult even for me to see him; Moran, expecting to find me there alone, would not look so closely. At least, so I hoped. I stole up the stairs to the top floor, and began working my way through the rooms.

All was dark and very still, save for the occasional scuttlings of insects or scratchings of rodents. It was unnerving. My mind could not, unfortunately, be entirely occupied by such a routine task. I was vexed with myself, moreover, because I had not really considered how Lestrade would respond to the successful conclusion of the night's adventure. What he had said so bitterly about my treating him like an inanimate tool--a pair of handcuffs and a jail cell--was true. I had spent years being outraged and frustrated by his mistakes. Then, as Lestrade's methods improved and my tolerance for human frailty increased, we had sometimes worked rather well together. But he had spoken to me that morning at Adair's house like someone who expected more from me than professional cooperation. He had spoken to me like a friend. More specifically, like a man who had been hurt and disappointed by a friend.

The number of friends I have made in my life can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The number of friends with whom I was never at any point infatuated is even smaller. That classification, I believe, contains only two specimens: Reginald Musgrave and Inspector Lestrade. Lestrade, I realized, was not in fact an ordinary official bungler. He was a  _rara avis._  I ought to handle him with more care. 

Thus preoccupied, I returned to the front room. I glanced over at the waxwork, and saw that there was another figure in the room, standing quite close to it.

My heart stopped. I held my breath. I peered into the gloom. If that was Moran, where was Watson? Why had he not made his move? Was he hurt? Had Moran somehow silently dispatched him, while I was upstairs with my recriminations?

A moment later, I realized. The other figure was in fact Watson. He had emerged from his hiding-place and was standing next to the waxwork, and a little behind it. He had one hand on the back of the waxwork's right shoulder, and his arm draped along the waxwork's back. Watson's head leaned on its left shoulder, his hair lightly brushing the waxwork's cheek. He looked quite content to be nestled there--quite relaxed, and happy, and at peace.

It is very difficult to be precise regarding my exact sensations. They were complex and unexpected. The ideal tactician would simply have noted that Watson had deserted his post and must be ushered back into his corner at once. Any number of highly unfortunate outcomes might occur if Moran came through the hall door at this moment. Fully aware of this, I was nevertheless transfixed.

It is a problem in phenomenology that one's perception of oneself can never coincide exactly with one's body. One cannot see the back of one's head. One cannot know exactly what one's internal organs are up to. Similarly, despite all of the time I had spent in Watson's company, I had never _seen_ us together in this way. The illustrations never do him justice, and the sketches of me are always at least partially satirical. Moreover, this unexciting, nondramatic moment of ordinary tenderness, the simple affection and trust visible in the drape of Watson's arm and the inclination of his head, could never be represented in those pages. I thought, with a pang, that I had often seen him and Mary sharing just such a moment, but that I never had--I never  _would_ \--be able to _see_ him sharing one with me. I continued to look, with tears coming unasked for to my eyes, at Watson and my lifeless self, knowing that every moment brought us closer to mortal peril.

As I stood paralyzed on the bottom step, I saw Watson's hand travel over the small of the waxwork's back. Watson's head turned sideways. His moustache tickled the waxwork's ear as he breathed something into it. Watson laughed, silently, as if it had responded. The hand on the waxwork's back dipped lower, cupping the waxwork's backside. Watson's other hand slid round the front of the waxwork and out of sight, though I could see the figure's black jacket stir as Watson slipped his unseen hand beneath it. Watson's body pressed, in a graceful but not gentle motion, against the waxwork's. I saw him take the bottom of the waxwork's earlobe gently between his teeth.

The explosion this triggered in my body and brain was incomprehensible at first. I was finally able to identify a burning in my vitals. As my face grew hot, I recognized the symptoms of jealousy.

I had literally become jealous of my own shadow.

This could not go on.

I stalked silently, angrily across the floor. I seized Watson by the back of his coat collar. I pulled him away from the waxwork. He spun around, wildly. I believe he too, at first, took me for Moran. Then I saw him smile, exultantly. 

I seized him by the lapels and dragged him backward across the room until my back slammed into the corner. His chest barrelled into mine. We fastened ourselves on each other. We thrust our tongues into each other's mouths, resisting then yielding, resisting for the sake of yielding. Even in Cornwall I had never been so consumed. I could feel the perspiration dropping from my brow. With every instant, my need intensified. My heart raced. I was suddenly, unpleasantly, reminded of a night in that hut on the moors when in a fit of ennui I had injected twice my usual dose of cocaine. 

I tried to push him away. "This is dangerous," I said.

"Of course it is," Watson replied, straining against me.

"Watson, I don't like this. Stop it at once."

Watson unhanded me and drew back.

In the darkness I could not read his expression, but from the way his hands dangled at his sides and his head hung down I could see he was wounded. But my heart was still pounding.

"Moran might come through that door at any moment," I whispered, furiously. "He is a man with nothing to lose and a long history of shooting to kill. Do not play with your own life and do not play with mine. Turn round, stay silent, and be on the alert for him."

Watson complied, silently.

As soon as his back was turned to me I was seized with remorse. If he had, perhaps unwittingly, started the dance, I was the one who gave chase. Nor could I account for the suddenness of my revulsion. There is so much about my own sensations, in this matter, that I find impenetrably mysterious. And had I not vowed to myself, on the brink of death, that I would never again tell myself to keep my hands off him?

I stole silently up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder. He did not take it, but he did not withdraw.

Keeping my right hand ready for Adair's loaded revolver, which was in my trouser pocket, I slipped my left arm round his waist.

His body underwent a slight tremor, and his stance shifted slightly as he leaned back against me.

Watson's shirt was rumpled, and damp in spots with perspiration. My hand pressed down upon his breast until I felt, faintly through the shirt and the skin and the muscle and the bone, his heart beating against my open palm.

We stood that way, without moving, for what seemed like hours. I found that I had no other desire but to stand there behind him with my hand on his heart. Listening for any sound indicating Moran's arrival, I also counted the beats of Watson's heart. Frantic at first, it became slow, soft, and steady, like his barely-audible breathing. He had confided in me in those first weeks that he felt his heart, medically speaking, to be his least reliable organ. He believed it had been irreparably damaged by a bout of enteric fever that he had barely survived. The bullet wounds, he said, were an inconvenience from which, if it was not raining, he could easily distract himself. But regarding his heart, he had grave doubts.

I listened to him breathe and thought of those kisses on the ledge at Reichanbach, all those days and nights in that cottage in Corwnall, all the struggling in the dark--the burning--the explosions--all those memorable occasions on which one of us has lit the other up like a torch and then caught fire and burned entwined with him. I could not have believed, if I had not lived it, that my body was capable of such sensations. But this eclipsed it all. I could not imagine anything more absorbing. To listen, with one's whole body, to the very pulse on which one's own life depends. There can be nothing more compelling. There can be nothing more terrifying.

In the silence, I heard the door to the back yard rattle.

Swiftly, I withdrew my hand and gave Watson a gentle squeeze on his shoulder. It was an old signal, and he understood it perfectly. He slipped away from me, staying within the shadow of the corner. I pressed my back against the wall, Adair's revolver in my raised right hand. In this darkness I could not see Watson, but I knew he would be standing with his back to the wall, revolver at the ready.

The door to the hallway swung open.

It was the man himself. I would have recognized the cruelty of his body even if I could not make out the lineaments of his once-handsome but dissipated face, or the obsessive gleam in his eyes. He was in evening dress, with a top hat still on his head, and a gold-handled cane swinging negligently in one hand. He wore a large, black overcoat which struck me as unnecessary for such a warm August evening. He saw the waxwork, and suppressed a cry. Hardly believing his good luck, he tucked the stick under his arm and crept toward the squares of dirty light cast by the front windows, one hand reaching into his coat pocket.

He stopped moving.

I could almost hear him thinking that this was too good to be true. In an instant, he would be undeceived, and we would lose the advantage.

Watson and I sprang out at exactly the same instant. Watson pointed his revolver right between Moran's eyes. I pointed mine his left side, which was turned toward me--aiming right (I hoped) between two ribs.

"Raise your hands, Colonel Moran," Watson said. 

Moran, instead, drew his weapon and fired.

As soon Moran's hand moved I launched myself at him. I knocked him to the floor. There was an unexpected clanking sound. I kicked the revolver away from his hand. Then he surged up and swung for my head; I dodged it. 

"Watson!" I shouted. "Are you hurt?"

For answer, Watson drove into Moran from the side, throwing him off balance. Moran tottered, but regained his footing. I tried to grapple with him. Moran slipped from my grasp and bent to retrieve his stick.

I was not surprised when he extracted a long, narrow blade from that stick. I did, however, feel a shock.

I took a moment to note what my sensations, at this very interesting moment, were. I found that there was a kind of chill in my viscera, but that I did not feel paralyzed. It was rather as if all of my nerves were so highly stimualted that my entire frame was vibrating. I did not know what Watson's sensations were, though he was not far from me. I could only sense my own nervous excitement.

Moran made no offer to drop his blade. I felt an extreme reluctance to disarm him. The three of us stood like statues in that darkened room, glancing warily from one to the other.

"It's over, Moran," I said, to release some nervous energy. "You will not escape this time. Turn yourself in and tell the police what you know. They might mitigate your sentence."

"What sentence?" Moran snarled. "I'm defending myself from two ruffians who ambushed me in a darkened room. It's you who's up queer street, Mr. Holmes, not me."

To ask him what he meant by that would have been an enormous tactical error. I said, instead, "Who told you about the Bruce-Partington plans?"

His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his hat, but he made certain I could see him sneering.

"It was your brother, Mr. Holmes."

What a poisonous devil that creature really was. I would sooner have had him drop another boulder on me than make this overture to that unkillable part of me that still mistrusted Mycroft. 

"Balderdash," said Watson.

I laughed. Moran's lips thinned. 

"Tosh, rubbish, stuff and nonsense," Watson continued.

"Piffle," I put in.

Watson lobbed it back. "Absolute rot."

"Utter bunkum."

Watson actually giggled. I caught his giggle as if it were an infection. Moran looked from one of us to the other as if we were out of our minds. Our shared giggle became wholehearted, uproarious laughter. With my body partially convulsed, and my revolver still trained upon him, the cogs and gears in my head began to turn again. I was not on a narrow ledge above the Reichenbach falls. I was not alone. It was Moran who was alone and outnumbered. _My_ lover was here; and _my_ friends were within call. And with a blade, he could only go for one of us.

I broke toward the front windows. I felt Moran give chase. I heard him close with Watson. As they struggled behind me, I threw open the window, snatched my revolver from the waxwork's pocket, aimed it with many a misgiving, and fired it up at the lighted window against which Monsieur Meunier's bust of me was silhouetted.

The glass of our old front window shattered. The bust flew back and out of sight. I heard a police whistle.

I whirled around to see, in the square of brighter light from the opened window, Watson on his back with Moran on top of him. Watson's left hand was clenched around Moran's right wrist, trying to force him to drop the blade. Moran's left hand was closing around Watson's throat, while Watson struck out at his arm with his free hand. 

I stamped down upon Moran's knife hand, breaking two of his fingers and forcing him to drop the blade. I seized the blade and put the point of it against Moran's neck. 

"Let go of him or I will slit your miserable throat," I said.

"Do it then," Moran grunted, through clenched teeth. His hand still closed on Watson's throat. Watson's face was beet red. His mouth was open in an aborted scream.

I took up the blade and plunged it into Moran's shoulder.

It went in faster and deeper than I had expected. Moran screamed. His body spasmed. In the reflex, he dropped Watson's throat. I withdrew the blade and kicked Moran in the ribs, so that he rolled off Watson. Moran curled up on his side, twitching and screaming, as blood stained the torn sleeve of his coat. 

"Watson," I shouted, bending over him. "Watson, are you hurt? Tell me you're not hurt. Speak to me. _Can_ you speak?"

Watson rolled over onto his side, then got into a crouch, then staggered up to his feet. He seemed not to want assistance, so I did not give him any; I merely hovered round him, as a dove might round a chick making its first flight from the nest.

"I'm all right, Holmes," he said. "It's nothing."

"Watson!" I cried. "You're bleeding!"

In the light from the street, the blood soaking his shirt looked almost black. He looked down, and with an air of clinical detachment, probed the stain and touched the wound.

"It's nothing, Holmes," Watson said, hoarsely. "It's a mere scratch. You cut right through his shoulder and the tip just nicked me."

"Oh thank God," I sighed.

He looked at me very solemnly. I believe that we both heard, though neither of us said them, those words from a book neither of us can now read without pain:  _Then I say 'Thank God' too._

"Good evening, gentlemen," said a familiar voice.

We both looked up. Outside the front window, flanked by two plainclothes policemen, stood Inspector Lestrade. 

"Lestrade," I said, eagerly. "Come inside and let me introduce you to Colonel Sebastian Moran."

 Lestrade thought briefly about climbing through the window. He contented himself with coming in through the street door, obligingly opened for him by one of the detectives. He planted his boots on the bloodstained floorboards in the square of light, and looked down at the writhing figure in the darkness.

"Colonel Moran," said Lestrade, as the two plainclothes detectives hauled him to his feet. "You are under arrest. It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you at your trial. Doctor Watson, perhaps you could look to that arm."

"Certainly," said Watson. Without any trace of animosity, he approached Moran, offering to inspect the wound. Moran snatched his arm away, snarling. 

"Keep your hands off me, sir," he sneered. "Inspector, I demand to be taken to an hospital. This madman," he said, nodding at me, "attacked me, unprovoked, in the dark--"

"Yes, with a knife you clearly brought to the scene in your own walking-stick," Lestrade observed. "Do go on, Colonel, as I have already cautioned you, and this marvelous narrative will be most helpful to us when establishing your truthfulness in court."

Moran glared, first at Lestrade, then at me. 

"You fiend!" he shouted. "You cunning, cunning fiend!"

"It takes one to know one," I said, cheefully.

"So," said Lestrade. "The two of you took up your posts here, watching for that shot at the upstairs window." He nodded toward the street. "Moran, most unexpectedly, chooses this exact spot to shoot from. He fires on the bust," Lestrade said, gesturing to illustrate, "then you attempt, as you  _will_ keep doing though neither of you has any technique or finesse in this area, to apprehend Moran yourselves. You imprudently allow him to unsheathe this weapon, there's a struggle..." Lestrade glanced from Watson to myself. "And you, Mr. Holmes, find yourself having to resolve it by stabbing him. Well, it's not a neat job, but we've got our bird all the same. On behalf of the force, Colonel, let me apologize to you for the broken wing. You should have come to us, we'd have done it better."

Moran turned to Lestrade, and tried to salvage a few shreds of dignity.

"You may or may not have just cause for arresting me,” said he, “but at least there can be no reason why I should submit to these gibes. If I am in the hands of the law, let things be done in a legal way.”

"Excellent suggestion," said Lestrade. "Hawkins, please examine the lining of that coat of his, and please do it carefully."

Hawkins peeled off the coat. The other detective snapped the bracelets on him. Blood continued to trickle from the wound in Moran's shoulder. Moran's face convulsed in rage as he felt the steel against his wrists.

Hawkins threw the coat on a clean part of the floor, and began palpating it. He tore the lining, and from the gap extracted, one by one, the components of one of Von Herder's famous air-guns. 

“An admirable and unique weapon,” I said, as the components emerged. “Noiseless and of tremendous power. For years I have been aware of its existence. I commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade and also the bullets which fit it.”

“You can trust us to look after that, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade, as the whole party moved towards the door. “Anything further to say?”

“Two things," I heard myself saying. "First, may I ask what charge you intend to prefer?"

"What charge?" said Lestrade, with a glance at me. "Why, the attempted murder of Sherlock Holmes."

I could not let him do it. I had allowed and encouraged him to draw numerous faulty inferences when I knew the facts to be otherwise. I could not let him take any of this into a courtroom and stake his reputation on it. 

"No, Lestrade," I said. "That won't do. The Adair affair is the stronger case, and carries the stiffer penalty. You have the weapon and you have the bullets. You're sure of him now."

I saw Lestrade glance toward the windows. The waxwork, in the scuffle, had been knocked to the ground. At some moment when everyone else's attention was elsewhere, Watson had whipped the cushions off the furniture and strewn them around its form, throwing the dirty sheets over the whole. 

"Very well," Lestrade said. "You may be correct. Hawkins, put him in the van and take it round to the hospital. Send Pruitt on to the Yard with the evidence."

"Right away, Inspector," said the detective. Lestrade's underlings marched Moran out of the house. The door slammed. Lestrade's gaze had wandered back to the pile near the windows. His face was impassive. 

After a long moment of suspense, he turned back to me, and drew a new breath.

"And the second thing?" he said.

"I wondered," I ventured, feeling a strange fluttering sensation in my stomach, "whether you might all the same wish to inspect the sitting room of 221b Baker Street, and perhaps partake of some refreshment there."

Lestrade smiled.

"I did ask Mrs. Husdon," I said, vexed at my own bashfulness, "to put some champagne on ice."

I glanced rather guiltily in Watson's direction. I had, of course, intended it for our own private consumption. I expected Watson to be angry. But Watson's eyes were twinkling, and his moustache was curved in a very specific pattern that indicates that he is doing his best not to break into a hearty laugh.

It came about, then, that within a few minutes, there was a little _soiree_ taking place in the sitting room at 221b Baker Street. The broken glass was swept up. The wax bust was made game of, and finally relegated to the corner near the Persian slipper. The champagne went round. Lestrade told stories of his early days in the force. I repeated some of the lies I had told Watson earlier that evening. Mrs. Hudson, I noted at one moment, took Watson off into a corner and there entered into an earnest conversation with him about Patrick. I saw him look at her, and nod kindly, and gently put a hand on her shoulder. I felt as if my heart had been flooded with some precious and golden liquid, and always just about to overflow.

Mrs. Hudson, after two glasses, asked Lestrade for a song. He obliged with a martial tune whose lyrics, had we all been quite sober, would certainly have been objectionable. Mrs. Hudson, prevailed upon, sang "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms." Her voice is thin, but her ear is good, and her tone surprisingly pure. I blew the dust off my violin case and gave the company a very rusty rendition of The Star of the County Down. Watson sang along. 

I had never had such a night. It seemed that our old sitting room contained the whole world--at least all of the world that I cared for. I only wished Mycroft could have been there. Or rather, I wished Mycroft could have a temperament that might allow him to enjoy being there.

At length the brandy and cigars were dusted off and brought out, which Mrs. Hudson took as her signal to retire. The conversation drifted back around to Moran.

"He was right about one thing," Lestrade said. "You are a cunning, cunning fiend."

Lestrade looked at the bust in the corner, and the hole that the revolver bullet had torn through it. 

"To catch a clever big game hunter like that with such a simple dodge."

I will never know if Lestrade never identified the waxwork, or simply decided never to mention it. But he seemed determined to stick to his original analysis. The fact that Moran had never actually assembled the air gun before supposedly shooting the bust with it had escaped his notice. Or else--perhaps--Lestrade chose to pretend that it had.

"Nonsense," said Watson.

We both looked at him. He had become unwontedly grave, and looked almost angry.

"Tiger hunting was a favorite sport of some of the officers in my regiment," Watson said. "I've seen it done. The guides take a goat, tether it to a tree in a clearing, and wait for a mother tiger to come looking for food for her cubs. When she takes the bait, the hunter, who's been sitting in the blind, blows her head off. She never sees them. It requires no more cunning and no more courage than throwing a boulder over a ledge." His hand absently strayed over the shirt I had lent him, fingers tracing the outline of the plaster over his wound. "Moran should never have gone after human quarry. He should have stuck to slaughtering animals. That was where he really found his level."

Lestrade looked at Watson, and let out a low whistle. "Fighting words," he said.

"Every one of them meant," Watson replied. "And the Adair case. Shot a man at long distance in the back of the head. The man is a coward. If by some accident he goes free, I intend to challenge him."

Lestrade laughed. I thought it best to laugh as well. Lestrade stood, and stretched, and said, "Better get home before the sun comes up. Care to share a cab, Doctor Watson?"

Watson played it with grace and naturalism. "Delighted, Inspector. Let me get my things."

He slipped into the hallway to get his coat, followed by Lestrade, who nipped down the hall to the W. C. When the door closed behind him, I seized the moment, nearly knocking Watson into the hatrack.

"I can't believe it," when we stopped to draw breath. "I can't believe you're going when you're finally here."

His moustache twitched in that way again.

"Bear it as best you can, Holmes," he said, gently. "We are playing for the long term here. This will pass."

"Yes, but  _how?_ " I whimpered.

Watson chuckled. He felt his waistcoat pockets. He withdrew a leatherbound memorandum book. He thumbed through it, folded down the corner of one page, and handed it to me.

"Journeys end in lovers meeting."

I slipped it into my pocket. Watson huddled on his coat. By the time Lestrade emerged, we looked quite as if we were parting as friends and colleagues. I saw the two of them down the stairs and into the cab. I moved away from the broken window. I sat at Watson's writing desk, and took out the memorandum book.

The page he had folded down began with this paragraph:

_Imagine that you, a man of leisure with a taste for beauty, have a habit of paying a daily visit to a museum which houses your favorite piece of classical statuary. Michelangelo's David, let's say, or the Dying Gaul. Every day, you stand behind the velvet-rope barrier and you feast your eyes upon the classic proportions, the melodic lines, the incredible naturalism in the curls of the hair, the straining of the muscles and sinews. You devour it with your eyes; you memorize its details, you amuse yourself in determining where to stand in order to see the well-loved figure to its best advantage. In time, you come to have such a complete image of this statue in your mind that you don't actually look at it any more. You still visit the museum; you interest yourself in other works of art; but mainly because those works of art are near that beloved figure, whose contours are so deeply etched on your heart that your vision is now redundant. By no amount of looking, you tell yourself, can you know that beauty any more intimately than you already do._

I have long ago given up publishing this as a monograph. The topic is too delicate and too complex to be subjected to the scientific gaze. The number of new sensations and feelings to be catalogued is potentially infinite. How, indeed, could I quantify the particular ache that throbbed dully in my bones as I read this passage? The specific constriction of my throat as I thought back to that first sight of him with the waxwork? The sting in the corners of my eyes--so many different stings, so many quantities and qualities of rheum and salt--as I read the rest of that entry? 

I cannot. I can only put this away and go to bed, humming the air of a song from a performance of  _Twelfth Night_ that we attended together, long ago, before either of us knew what we know now about lovers' partings, or lovers' meetings.

SH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This one is kind of a wild ride. Many, many tones and modes are used. Holmes is obviously experimenting with his prose style. But, a few notes:
> 
> The waxwork thing would surely not have happened if it weren't for my visit last summer to the [Sherlock Holmes Museum](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/175282757929/i-have-beheld-the-sherlock-holmes-museum) in London. But also, Doyle has Holmes deceiving baddies with waxworks of himself in two stories: "Empty House" and "Mazarin Stone." If you have ever seen a life-size waxwork, you will know I speak truth when I say that it is impossible to imagine anyone really being fooled into thinking it is alive; but perhaps to Doyle a waxwork was as convincing as a Photoshopped image is to us. Anyway, I sometimes think that this stuff with waxworks in the Return is an expression of Doyle's increasing consciousness of Holmes as having passed out of his control and become a mass production--the deerstalkers, the stage plays, the illustrations, etc. _Can the readers tell the real Holmes that I write from the fake Holmes of the hucksters? Maybe not._ The exact nature of Watson's interest in that waxwork in this story, I think, is up for interpretation. One of the fun things about writing from Holmes's perspective is that Watson gets to be mysterious sometimes. 
> 
> There have been so many near-death moments and rescuings in this series that I decided not to do a Full Garrideb here; but this story does kind of remix that moment in a way that makes sense for this series. "Then I say 'thank God' too" is how Mary Morstan responds, in _Sign of Four_ , to Watson blurting out "Thank God" when he realizes that the treasure is gone and then explaining it by telling her that now he can propose to her. 
> 
> H/W and Johnlockers alike are endlessly fascinated with the eternal writing challenge that might be posed thusly: How do you get Sherlock Holmes into a relationship and still keep him in character? "Notes" I & II give us some insight into how Holmes is handling it. In "Notes I," he is quite serious about studying his own feelings from a scientific perspective. Now that he has started to notice his sensations, he's fascinated by them. "Notes" II is more about his concerns about how to integrate the romance with their work (something John and Sherlock also struggle with in my other Return story, "Empty Houses"). There are some bumps in the road; but at the end, when he starts laughing with Watson, I think you see him realizing that the passions do have a role to play in the successful resolution of a case. 
> 
> Sherlock comes up with his own explanation of Watson's faint, which is perfectly plausible. There is a possibly more sinister explanation consistent with Watson's concerns about his heart. Fainting happens, basically, when your blood pressure drops and your circulation temporarily fails to get enough blood to your brain. The faint corrects this by putting your head on a level with your feet. Sometimes a faint is just a faint. But sometimes it's a sign that something's gone wrong with your circulatory system. Don't worry, though, I'm not gonna go there.


End file.
